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By Chris Blair

I’ve been aware of Netflix for years, but always viewed their service as more trouble than it was worth. When it comes to watching movies, I’m the spontaneous type, rarely planning a viewing in advance, so ordering a movie or movies, then waiting for them to be delivered in the mail didn’t seem very attractive.

When Netlix added the ability to stream movies instantly, I was more intrigued, but since I couldn’t imagine watching a full-length feature on my laptop or desktop computer and didn’t have a way to output a computer signal to my TV, it didn’t make sense to try it then either.

Then in the Spring of this year Netflix added the ability to stream movies wirelessly to the Wii (which we got the kids for Christmas).  I hate to admit it, but I didn’t even know the Wii had wireless capability! But now it seemed like a good time to give Netflix a try.

Streaming to wireless devices was nothing new for Netflix. For some time it had offered instant streaming to a host of other devices, including Xbox 360, Tivo, the Roku set-top box and a variety of wireless enabled blu-ray players and TVs. One of our employees, Cole Perkins had often talked about his Netflix setup, especially the quality of the digitally delivered movies, but I had always assumed they were delivered over a wired Internet connection. I found it hard to believe that SD and even HD movies could stream reliably over wireless, and if they could, further questioned the visual quality considering the amount of compression required to maintain the data stream.

Well, I’m here to tell you the quality, reliability and ease of use is superb. Not to mention the ability to pick and choose from thousands of titles at the touch of a button, including not only movies, but also thousands of television shows. The ability to watch an entire season of a TV series is a great option, and my 6-year old daughter watched all three seasons of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender during her summer break! There are also stand-up comedy specials, documentaries, and hundreds of children’s programming choices.

Surprisingly I’ve also found Netflix’s mail delivery option enjoyable as well. Place a title in your queue by early afternoon and it’s typically delivered the next day. Better still, there’s no limit to how long you keep it and the DVD is returned in the same mailer it came in.

The streaming service is impressive. You load movies into an instant queue on your computer or directly from the Wii interface on the TV. Once loaded, you just click them and hit play. It takes about 15-20 seconds for the title to buffer before starting. In 2 months of use, we’ve watched literally hundreds of movies and television shows and I’ve only seen one title pause during playback. The image and sound froze for about 10 seconds, but as soon as the data stream caught up, the movie continued uninterrupted. Another plus to the streaming option is you can move backwards, forward and pause playback, and if you stop it, you can pick it up right where you left off.

And the technical quality is nothing short of amazing. The only time you see compression artifacts is in extremely dark scenes, which is a non-issue because the scenes are so dark there’s almost nothing visable anyway. The compression shows up as large, off-color blocks, but it doesn’t impact the viewing experience at all.

And what about the price? Well, for $9 a month, we can stream an unlimited number of movies and order a limited number of DVDs. At that price, you can only have one DVD in your possession at a time. So if you order 2 DVDs, the first one is delivered, you keep it as long as you want and as soon as Netflix gets it back, your second DVD is sent (again, usually the same day the other is received). Pay a few dollars more a month and you can get more DVDs delivered at the same time. But with the $9 package, you can place up to 6 DVDs in your queue at one time and as fast as you can watch and return, you’ll continue getting the other movies in your queue.

Plus, the entire first month is FREE. That’s right, you can sign-up and try the service with NO limitations for an entire month before committing to it. There are NO catches either. You just cancel if you don’t want to commit to it. Even better, there are NO contracts or penalties after you do decide to pay for the service. So if you pay for a few months, then decide to cancel, just cancel online and your membership will stop at the end of that month, no questions asked. Even more refreshing, it’s easy to find the cancellation link on their website and they clearly spell out how your membership works.

The only drawback to the service is that the instant streaming selection is limited. But from what I’ve read, Netflix isn’t the one limiting the number. It’s the major movie studios, who are all wary of what online streaming might do to their aftermarket DVD and premium movie channel revenue. Despite this, I’ve found plenty of attractive viewing choices available via instant play, and as I said before, the mail delivery option is actually pretty nice once you get used to it.

And what about ease of use? The only complex part of configuring the service was setting up the Wii console to connect with our wireless router. And that wasn’t really all that difficult since Nintendo had a detailed “how to” right on their website. But I could envision non-technical folks having trouble with that part of the setup.

Of course, that’s not Netflix’s fault. It’s just one of the requirements for being able to use the streaming option. You could always fore-go that and just use the mail delivery option. They also offer a limited number of Blu-ray DVD titles…and the streaming service will examine the settings on your wireless device along with your connection speed and deliver the highest quality stream possible. So you can even stream HD content to a fast enough wireless device hooked to an HDTV.

All in all, in my opinion Netflix is the best value on the planet. We’ve watched hundreds of programs and movies in the last two months, all for $18! You could spend that for a handful of traditional movie rentals!

Oddly enough, one thing I don’t like about Netflix is their advertising, especially their mind-numbing radio ads. Especially the ones that sound like a game show, with the host asking nonsensical questions to contestants (who somehow answer them with even more nonsensical responses).  They’re beyond stupid and they run incessantly. With a service this good, there’s really no need to be so quirky with their ads. I’ve recently seen new TV ads that use nicely shot testimonials from actual users along with a big push for people to try the service through the free trial. Now that’s the way to sell this service. Because once you try it, it sells itself.

Filed under: Thoughts & Musings, Web Video on July 25th, 2010